$15 minimum wage, Illegal immigration and Automation...

Just to be clear, automation, immigration and the $15 living wage are not all directly connected but they are part of the situation we find ourselves having to deal with. Loss of manufacturing and globalism are factors as well as greedy corporatism.

The easiest way to get to a $15 wage is to have more jobs than workers......we aren't headed that direction.

Please tell me how we get there with the added weight of automation and illegal Immigration dragging down wages?

a reply to: TerryMcGuire

Well thought out and written post. The Party that has the answer to this trillion. Dollar question will win elections.

It's almost like the powers that help guide the situations that unfold are trying to create problems for American and European people.

Some jobs will never pay a lot because the value of the labor performed is simply not worth much. A retail cashier is never going to get a "living wage". These jobs were never intended to support a family, etc.

As wages rise for those types of jobs, it makes the math/return on investment for automation much more palatable for a company. They will quickly move to automation. Several restaurants where I live have self-serve cashiers (iPad) where you just come in an tap out our order. So instead of having say 5 cashiers making $9/hr or whatever, they now have 1 or 2 making $15/hr.

Minimum wages are why you rarely see things like elevator operations, theatre ushers, full service gas stations, etc. It is far cheaper to automate in light of higher wages than to just keep those jobs.

Illegal immigration most certainly depresses wages. In particular, you see a lot of black teen unemployment because of it.

Markets and capital are fluid. A company has to seek out the lowest costs of operations in order to remain competitive. Consumers are also responsible because they put pressure on companies to keep costs low.

a reply to: pavil

The easiest way to get to a $15 wage is to have more jobs than workers......we aren't headed that direction.

Not necessarily. When we have more jobs than workers, companies will still find cheap labor forces to fill those gaps. Some will change the job titles into "unpaid internships" in order to get free college and college graduate labor. Others will get prison labor to do the work (like HERE). And others will target illegal immigrants, felons, and others who can't get legal jobs to work for them under the table.

The easiest way for us to get to a $15 wage is to mandate it.

a reply to: NewzNose

I never said that all house work, construction, or yard work were performed by illegal labor. So what are you rambling about? Your anecdotal account doesn't nullify anything I said.

MAKE people like you feed, cloth, shelter a minimum of 5 illegals...then you'll see the light.

WTF does this have to do with my points?

originally posted by: enlightenedservant
a reply to: pavil

The easiest way to get to a $15 wage is to have more jobs than workers......we aren't headed that direction.

Not necessarily. When we have more jobs than workers, companies will still find cheap labor forces to fill those gaps. Some will change the job titles into "unpaid internships" in order to get free college and college graduate labor. Others will get prison labor to do the work (like HERE). And others will target illegal immigrants, felons, and others who can't get legal jobs to work for them under the table.

The easiest way for us to get to a $15 wage is to mandate it.

When you have more jobs than workers, you have to raise wages to attract employment. When you have more workers than jobs, wages go down because competition among workers requires them to accept less and less salary to get the job.

You can mandate $15/hr all you want. Companies will either raise prices or seek ways to not hire workers through automation or elimination of those jobs altogether.

a reply to: luke1212

Everthing will be automated, there's no stopping that. And any points of view to try are short sighted and unrealistic.

We need to be putting serious thoughts into how we want a post occupational society to work. Possibly even a post currency society.

We need to seriously start thinking outside the box. Because these changes are coming much faster than our govts. can act. And it looks to me like the transition is going to be very painful.

the internat-ionalists want their cheap unskilled labor. remember, they only care about the two percent. why do you think the media is run by one small group of minions? so is the biggov, they run everything. and their protocols call for inter-nationalism.

a reply to: enlightenedservant
Do you think we are headed towards more jobs than employees? Not many experts believe that.

a reply to: mysterioustranger

"Don't complain about your s# wages or they'll replace you with a robot!"

The fact of the matter is, none of us can compete with a robot in a repetitive task. That's a lesson that should have been learned by any American child whose ever heard the story of John Henry. Did he beat the steam powered hammer? Yea and then he immediately collapsed and died. Being dead, he couldn't show up for work day #2, whereas that steam powered hammer just kept hammering away.

Robots are faster, more accurate, don't take breaks, don't get fatigued, don't get sick, don't get tired, don't sleep, don't get paid OT, etc. Any job that can be automated, will be automated eventually. Demanding a living wage might speed up that process slightly for a given job, but not all that much.

What's really f'd up here is that technological improvements should lead to better standards of living for everyone, not more profit for the extreme few. Fear not, ignoring technological unemployment is not a sustainable course of action. At some point, there won't be enough jobs to support enough consumers to keep paying for the goods and services provided by robots and computers.

Also, btw, this isn't a right vs left issue, we all will be facing the effects of the decisions we make on this. It will be a major restructuring of how society works when there isn't enough jobs for people to fill.

For example, how do you tax a society that doesn't have employment like we have known it to be? Sure tax businesses more, but it will be a profound change to how we operate and fund government even. It will be a game changer and no one seems to even know the game.

a reply to: TerryMcGuire

I agree, and alot of the BLM, SJW and the like could be a result of the crap prospects a very good percentage of the young adults are facing.

The gen Xers could very well be the last gen that may enjoy the American dream for a part of their life. We are in a pickle that will take riots- to solve.
Hell the congress can't even get health care right, and that is something that they can copy off their neighbor on (canada). There are so many issues that we have allowed to get out of control by can kicking. I am a pretty logical person, and I can not see corps "giving" anyone a universal wage-so the story goes.

.

originally posted by: Edumakated

originally posted by: enlightenedservant
a reply to: pavil

The easiest way to get to a $15 wage is to have more jobs than workers......we aren't headed that direction.

Not necessarily. When we have more jobs than workers, companies will still find cheap labor forces to fill those gaps. Some will change the job titles into "unpaid internships" in order to get free college and college graduate labor. Others will get prison labor to do the work (like HERE). And others will target illegal immigrants, felons, and others who can't get legal jobs to work for them under the table.

The easiest way for us to get to a $15 wage is to mandate it.

When you have more jobs than workers, you have to raise wages to attract employment. When you have more workers than jobs, wages go down because competition among workers requires them to accept less and less salary to get the job.

You can mandate $15/hr all you want. Companies will either raise prices or seek ways to not hire workers through automation or elimination of those jobs altogether.

Perhaps raising wages when lack of workers is good idea in an Econ 101 class, but in the real world drywallers contractors go to the Lowes parking lot and pick up a couple of illegals and pay then 35$ for a day of humping dry wall.

The real world is not fair or black and white-it is a profitable grey.



.

a reply to: pavil
Oh my, oh my, Here we go again. Listen very carefully. I don't care what you want to call it, conservatism, communism, the real answer (which you are not going to like) stems back to the Tolpuddle martyrs and the industrial revolution.
Exactly the same then as now. Bosses, owner, entrepreneurs, whatever you want to call them, I'll refer to them as bosses.
Well, the bosses suddenly found out that there were machines that could do the work. One machine could do 5 mens work, no pay, no sickness (except when it broke down), nothing that a human worker wanted.
So to allay trouble the bosses said "we will use these machines to do your work and you will have more leisure time to enjoy yourselves".
What they didn't tell them was they will be sacked with no money to enjoy the said leasure time.
The same principal is happening today, exactly the same. How do you reconcile the problem?
First you must ask yourself, what makes a country? It ain't the land cos the land is without the people.
IT'S THE PEOPLE that makes a country. Now how the people treat each other is the very crux of the matter. ie. the haves and have nots.
In answer to your question (the bit Americans don't like) EXAMPLE:- Bill gates worth 85 + billion dollars, say his company employs a million people, why doesn't Mr Gates sack his million employees and give them a million dollars pay off.
That's only one of his billions, yet a million employees could retire and he could employ a new million workers.
Now he's just one more example, how many more multi- billionaires can you name that's sitting on obscene amounts of money that could pay a living wage to every American to sit back and let the automatons earn their money for them.
Don't get me on the obscene amount America pays on defence. That defends nothing and no-one, oklahoma, 911 etc..
In a nut shell a company gets automated it should pay the government the the lions share those automatons make to pay for the workers that they have sacked.
But it wont happen unless the government enacts laws to control corporations and I can here all you bosses cry "but it's my business, I payed for the automatons so ALL the profits mine".
Same answer they gave in the 1800s in the industrial revolution.

originally posted by: theantediluvian
a reply to: mysterioustranger

What's really f'd up here is that technological improvements should lead to better standards of living for everyone, not more profit for the extreme few. Fear not, ignoring technological unemployment is not a sustainable course of action. At some point, there won't be enough jobs to support enough consumers to keep paying for the goods and services provided by robots and computers.

The technological advances do lead to better standards of living. Even those at the lower end of the income scale live better than the upper class did decades ago. In fact, if we are being honest, there isn't a huge delta in standard of living between rich and poor except at the very margins at least here in America and other first world western countries.

The poorest in America have cars, clothing, TVs, cell phones, air conditioning, etc.

I think the issue right now though is that it is becoming harder and harder to stay competitive in terms of employment. The penalties for not being educated, criminal records, having kids out of wedlock, and other decisions can have far more of a negative impact on someone's earning prospects today than in the past.

It used to be you could be a goofball in high school. not go to college. Sooner or later, you'd mature and you could get a job at a plant driving widgets and make a decent wage. It isn't like that anymore.

originally posted by: seasonal

originally posted by: Edumakated

originally posted by: enlightenedservant
a reply to: pavil

The easiest way to get to a $15 wage is to have more jobs than workers......we aren't headed that direction.

Not necessarily. When we have more jobs than workers, companies will still find cheap labor forces to fill those gaps. Some will change the job titles into "unpaid internships" in order to get free college and college graduate labor. Others will get prison labor to do the work (like HERE). And others will target illegal immigrants, felons, and others who can't get legal jobs to work for them under the table.

The easiest way for us to get to a $15 wage is to mandate it.

When you have more jobs than workers, you have to raise wages to attract employment. When you have more workers than jobs, wages go down because competition among workers requires them to accept less and less salary to get the job.

You can mandate $15/hr all you want. Companies will either raise prices or seek ways to not hire workers through automation or elimination of those jobs altogether.

Perhaps raising wages when lack of workers is good idea in an Econ 101 class, but in the real world drywallers contractors go to the Lowes parking lot and pick up a couple of illegals and pay then 35$ for a day of humping dry wall.

The real world is not fair or black and white-it is a profitable grey.



.

Yes they do BECAUSE THERE ARE MORE WORKERS THAN JOBS. Hence why illegals can drive down wages. Whether the workers are legal or not is irrelevant. The more people who are available to do something, the less you have to pay someone to get them to do a job.

a reply to: crayzeed

Very good post. It is going to take a revolution, and no one will be the winner because it will be the corp govt against the people. If it is different someone please point out any indicator that this is going to end with out a 3rd WW.

I think your math is off. A billion is a 1,000 million.

That's only one of his billions, yet a million employees could retire and he could employ a new million workers.

a reply to: Edumakated

In other words, you're just going to ignore everything I said in my post? LOL

a reply to: seasonal

I agree, and alot of the BLM, SJW and the like could be a result of the crap prospects a very good percentage of the young adults are facing.

That above is an understated aspect of the condition of our youth today in my thinking. Certainly it is only one aspect but for me it is a predominant part of it. I hold closely to the thought that this young generation can see more easily then previous generations that the future is grim for not only the lazy but for the ambitious as well. And while I do not condone many of the manifestations of their freaking out over their future, I can understand and sympathize with it. And I think you are right in that gen Xers can not only see that the American Dream is not going to happen for them but also that that dream is the carrot for the horse.

There are so many issues that we have allowed to get out of control by can kicking.

And that is also part of the problem. For too long the problems of the present have been bandaged rather than cured, the and solutions have been at best temporarily restorative rather than preventative.

And the ''kicking the can'' concept goes so much further. So much of the economy is based on a kicking the can concept. Credit. When we run out of money to ''consume'' we place the onus on the future for payment. Borrowing should be an action of emergency rather than a foundation for an economy.